EcoLOGICAL Tip #4: Shopping at Thrift Stores

Trafton B.

February 20, 2010 - 12:50 PM

Time for another installment of the (newly renamed) "Ecological Tips" for making little changes in your lives that have big impacts on the environment. Today's tip is in honor of the brand new Goodwill store that opened near campus on Franklin & Ferry Street.

Today, I'd like to talk to you about shopping. Everyone does it and I'm not trying to change that; our economy relies on it, so why bother? But our consumer culture does have a profound impact on the environment because everything we buy - clothing, groceries, electronics et cetera - came from some place in the natural world. And by and large, most of the impacts from consumption are hidden away from plain view - in rural hinterlands, fenced off industrial sites and foreign nations. In the grand scheme of things, American's consume nearly 120 pounds of stuff every day in natural resources extracted from farms, forests, rangelands and mines although we see only a fraction of it.
Specifically for clothes, the things we know about are the polyester, cotton and dyes in our t-shirts or pants. We don't consider the crude oil & petroleum it took to synthesize the polyester, the cotton fields sprayed with pesticides in the South or the bleach and industrial chemicals used in the dying process. Also, it's likely that all three of those materials came from a different geographic region of the world and were sent to yet another location for manufacturing before finally reaching our nearby department store for purchase. Don't even get me started on shoes, with leather, rubber and synthetics.

Over the past few decades a quiet revolution has been gaining momentum to raise awareness of this conundrum of ecology versus consumption. For more info, check out some of the references listed below.

I'm not so much focused on the root issues right now, although they are no less important. Instead, I want to provide a simple solution.

Shop at thrift stores. Let me break it down before your mind wanders and you get antsy. There are lots of different kinds of thrift stores out there, so let's clarify because each store has its place.
First, you have your national non-profit second hand stores - Goodwill, St. Vincent de Paul, Salvation Army and Value Village. This group of thrift stores is not exactly known for its quality of products.
Personally, I have no problem shopping for plaid flannel shirts and the occasional glassware or decorative accessory if I see something fun that catches my eye. More often if I'm shopping at Goodwill, I'm looking for a themed party. For example, I found a big, puffy, neon jacket and pants for our friends' 90s Party yesterday. I don't expect everyone to feel comfortable buying second hand clothing on a regular basis, but you can find some true gems if you look hard enough. Plus, they're super cheap. That entire outfit plus an old Ducks football hat and two clunky cell-phone walkie-talkies cost about $15.

Next, for the more sophisticated thrift shoppers, we have more local options (depending on where you are.) In Eugene, we have Buffalo Exchange, Eugene Jeans, Nobody's Baby, or Oak Street Vintage. Seriously, the list goes on for days. Just type "Thift Shop" into Google maps and see what comes up near you.

If you're looking for less worn down clothing, or at least stylishly worn down clothing, then these upper-tier thrift shops are the best places in town. Plus, you can trade in clothing at these places too. I'm not a frequent shopper at the Buffalo Exchange, but I know that you can sell any clothes back to them for either store credit or cash - given that the clothes are still in good condition, and whatever they won't take, just walk about block and a half down the road to drop them off at St. Vincent de Paul.

See how simple it is? Buy second-hand clothing is a misnomer. Second-hand gives off this wretched connotation that makes people wonder where it's been and who's been wearing it. Maybe I've been brain washed from living in a college world where people down expect you to wear the most professional clothing every day, but thrift store shopping is underappreciated in my opinion.
Next time you need a new pair of jeans, a plaid flannel t-shirt or a neon stretchy pants. Why not try your local thrift shop? Quick, fun, economical and, of course, environmental. One less t-shirt made means tons less water, cotton and oil used to make the shirt in the first place.

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For more info check out:

Stuff: The Secret Life of Everyday Things by John C. Ryan & Alan Thein During

Ryan and During analyze the manufacturing processes behind every day things we know and love like coffee, newspapers, shirts, shoes, computers and more, detailing the inputs behind the outputs in a concise eighty pages. It's the accessible handbook version of extensive scientific research projects.

The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard

Annie's quick, 20-minute video is gaining global recognition as an accessible explanation of common market processes from extraction to consumption. Warning: there is environmental bias behind Annie's words, but it's worth having a look at.